Rosa/Luisa: The California Whirlwind, Part Two

“Strange things are happening to this land,” said Luisa Moreno in 1949. “Yes, tragically the unmistakable signs are before us…who really love America. And it is we who must sound the alarm, for the workers and the people to hear and take notice.”

Speaking at the 12th annual convention of the California Congress of Industrial Organizations Council, Moreno explained: “Today, the fight for the very fundamentals of American democracy must again be fought for and reestablished.”

Moreno and husband Gray Bemis had recently built a small red house on an Encanto hillside. Known as the “California Whirlwind” for her 20 years as a labor activist, Moreno felt she had found a home at last on Medio Drive. In semiretirement, she joined the San Diego Organic Gardening Club, collected pre-Columbian art, and loved a quiet amble through Balboa Park. Although the San Diego Union labeled her “a subversive living under cover” and reactionary state senator Jack Tenney had called her a “parasitic menace” in deportation proceedings, Moreno made the inflammatory remarks, now known as the “Caravan of Sorrow” speech.

“[Latino workers] are not aliens,” she concluded. “They have contributed their endurance, sacrifices, youth, and labor to the Southwest. Indirectly, they have paid more taxes than all the stockholders of California’s industrialized agriculture, the sugar companies, and the large cotton interests.”

In 1950, like several other red-baited labor leaders, including San Diego’s Roberto Galvan, Moreno and Bemis were forced to leave the United States.

She came to San Diego in 1937. At age 31, she had a national reputation as a champion of workers’ rights, especially for women. Her motto: “One person can’t do anything; it’s only with others that things are accomplished.”

In 1935, after five years as a junior organizer in New York, she left her first husband and went to Florida with her daughter Mytyl. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) hired her to organize Latino, African-American, and Italian cigar workers in plants at Ybor City, Lakeland, and Jacksonville. But why a woman — a Latina, at that — in such a male-dominated milieu?

“The Ku Klux Klan,” writes Vicki L. Ruiz, “had a reputation for terrorizing labor activists and other progressives, which is one reason why the AFL was afraid of Florida. While [Moreno’s] bosses no doubt recognized her talent, they also considered her young, green, and expendable.”

Outside the plants, and at union hall meetings, Moreno listened as much as she spoke. Rather than offer a blanket solution, she asked workers: “What are your problems?” And when she gave a speech, witnesses agree, she was “forceful,” with a “talent for persuasion.” These skills surprised many because in private she was proper, soft-spoken, almost compulsively reserved. She rarely talked about herself and always looked fresh from the hairdresser’s.

She left New York, she said, because unions paid little attention to Latinas. In Florida she produced a solid contract with 13,000 employees. The Klan was not a problem; the AFL was. The negotiations favored labor, said the higher-ups; water them down for management.

On hearing the news, Moreno urged workers to reject the counter-proposal. For her efforts, the AFL transferred her to Pennsylvania. After numerous frustrations, she resigned in 1937, joined the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), and moved to San Diego.

In later years, Moreno swore she’d never eat canned food. She knew, writes Vicki Ruiz, “the conditions under which produce was processed.”

In the 1920s, cannery workers were paid by the hour. During the Depression, most women were paid “piece work,” by the number of cans they filled (or burlap sacks in the fields). “The faster we packed,” said Katie Asaro, who worked at the Van Camp Cannery in San Diego, “the more trays we packed, the more money we made.”

Even with no fish on the conveyor belts, women still had to be at Van Camp’s by sunup — on their own time. They were also on call, “ready to run to work whenever tuna boats arrived at the wharves.” When several came in, says Asaro, “the cannery would be flooded with fish” that had to be gutted (by males) and put on a large wooden tray for cooking. A conveyor belt then took the cooling meat to 60-foot-long cleaning tables, where women removed scales and bones, then on to tables where others packed the white meat into cans.

During peak periods, a crane heaped tons of tuna into a 100-yard flume down to the cannery (after a 24-hour walkout at Van Camp in 1937, employees had to pack 160 tons). Van Camp and other canneries went on “speed up”: workers did the same tasks double- and sometimes triple-time, for the same pay. They were on their feet all day. Accidents, in sweatshop conditions, were rife.

“If a worker cut her finger slightly while paring or canning,” says Moreno, “[she was] reluctant to take time to have it bandaged simply because she feared falling behind under the piece-rate scale.” Fingers became infected; some even lost. The women — as much out of pride as fear of falling behind — took more chances. Urged on by supervisors, they moved quicker on floors slippery with fish gurry. They had five minutes, in the morning and the afternoon, to use a “filthy” restroom, and labored until the last fish was processed.

“We worked 14 to 16 hours a day on piece-work rates,” remembered Inez Caerno, “[which] were cut every time we began to make enough to live on. The bosses always wanted us to work faster and faster, and if we didn’t, we were fired.” Checkers with clipboards kept score.

In 1937, Moreno began organizing the packing houses and canneries along the San Diego waterfront. She made inroads at the Ortega Chili plant and, working with Roberto Galvan, organized workers at tuna canneries in fish-streaked aprons and high boots.

Always on the move, Galvan “ran a labor union from a hotel room,” writes Carlos Larralde,” because he “faced regular threats from the Klan.” In one instance, the San Diego chapter put a stick of dynamite in his car. Galvan’s motto: “I do not believe in perfection. I believe in improvement.”

Comments

I wish my grandfather had known her! He was a naturalized citizen from Chihuahua, Mexico - he and my grandmother left the area in the early 1900's to flee the revolution and Pancho Via's wildness. They both worked in Az - she for a rancher in their home, and he on the railroad projects. He had to rise well before sunup each morning and wait by the window of their two-room shack to see if the foreman would raise a lantern to call him to work. He labored very hard for most of his life, laying track and working at the ranch as well. He loved to read, and his children grew up with the same penchant for books and learning. And, although he worked well into his 70's and lived into his 90's - no pension to speak of, no employment rights, no sick leave, no vacations. None for my grandmother either, come to think of it. They could have used a Whirlwind.... what became of her in Mexico?!!!?

Moreno lived another 42 years. She and her husband raised chickens in Chihuahua, Mexico. Then they lived in other Latin American countries. She went back to Guatemala, but fled when the U.S.-backed coup took over in 1954. For a while, after her husband died, she managed an art gallery in Tijuana (Cesar Chavez and Delores Huerta would visit her, asking advice about organizing). In 1984, the U.S. wouldn't let her return for medical treatment she needed badly (typical Rosa: she refused to cross the border incognito). Finally back to Guatemala, where she died November 4, 1992. Vicki L. Ruiz, who interviewed her and became a friend, is co-writing a biography of Moreno.

The irony of much of the "border" tragedy is that Native American blood runs in most of the veins (DNA actually) of the so-called "aliens," and if "blood" (actually culture) counts (as apparently it does in Israel, for example), "they" were here first. There were no borders until the Europeans and their descendants made them by force. The Spanish were not appreciably “better” than the British, the “Americans,” or any of the other truly alien invaders. Given these facts it is incredible that the term "Hispanic" (of Spain or the Iberian peninsula of Europe) is used. That may be an inconvenient, embarrassing truth, but it is the truth. And the atrocities and suffering and deaths continue . . .

Actually, Mexico "got it" from Spain. If I remember my California history correctly, there were quite a few Europeans who explored California as as far back as the 1500's. Pretty familiar names, Cabrillo, Sir Francis Drake. The Spanish started moving in on the mid 1700's and building their missions. The one in Mission valley, was the first. Mexico took control in the early 1800's.
The first inhabitants have been dated back about 15k yrs. Nobody has really proven for certain how they arrived or where they came from but most archeologists think that they arrived in the region between 15k and 13k years ago and that they came overland from Northeastern Asia.
I don't know about calling them native americans though, since their was no america at the time. I think it was the Spanish who first started using the name California and then it ws for pretty much the entire southwest region that they controlled. Before that they were just natives.
Thus endeth the history lesson for today

but exploration and settlement by Europeans along the coasts and in the inland valleys began in the 16th century

the remains of Arlington Springs Man on Santa Rosa Island are among the traces of a very early habitation, dated to the Wisconsin glaciation (the most recent ice age) about 13,000 years ago. In all, some 30 tribes or culture groups lived in what is now California, gathered into perhaps six different language family groups. These groups included the early-arriving Hokan family (winding up in the mountainous far north and Colorado River basin in the south) and the recently-arrived Uto-Aztecan of the desert southeast. This cultural diversity was among the densest in North America, and was likely the result of a series of migrations and invasions during the last 10,000-15,000 years At the time of the first European contact, indigenous tribes included the Chumash, Maidu, Miwok, Modoc, Mohave, Ohlone, Pomo, Serrano, Shasta, Tataviam, Tongva and Wintu

The first European explorers, flying the flags of Spain and of England, sailed along the coast of California from the early 16th century to the mid-18th century, but no European settlements were established. The most important colonial power, Spain, focused attention on its imperial centers in Mexico and Peru. Confident of Spanish claims to all lands touching the Pacific Ocean (including California), Spain sent an exploring party sailing along the California coast. The California seen by these ship-bound explorers was one of hilly grasslands and wooded canyons, with few apparent resources or natural ports to attract colonists

"but exploration and settlement by Europeans along the coasts and in the inland valleys began in the 16th century"

Exactly as I said, there were quite a few Europeans who explored California as as far back as the 1500's.
Most historians agree that Portuguese-born Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo was the first European to explore California in 1542, while sailing under the Spanish flag.
In 1579, it was Englishman Sir Francis Drake claimed the whole territory for the English Crown.
From the time the Spanish began their Mission settlements in 1769 until Californis fell under the control of the US, about 1/2 of the Indian population was wiped out, primarily due to diseases introduced by the Europeans and as the result of their mistreatment as slave labor with the resulting changesto their diet and nutrition(and the ensuing revolts becuase of their enslavement.)
The Spanish were generous enough to give the natives the right to continue to occupy their villages, though. Something the whites seemed not to care about as they rolled their way across the great plains towards the West.

BTW, There have been literally thousands of books written on the anthropological history of the native californians. You're much too good a writer to just simply cut and past from wikipedia.